The March issue is now online! We have some great features on:
– Aruban literature in the picture
– The bunny Nijntje now speaks ‘Papiamentu’
– Events Calendar with One Voice Festival, Women in Paradise and more
– Newly arrived, Soon for sale books and more.

“But what is it we are afraid of?” wrote Virginia Woolf in 1918. “We are not afraid of ruins, or moonlight, or ghosts.” Woolf was charting a sea-change in the nature of the supernatural tale, but she might as well have been asking future readers “Who will you be, and what will frighten you?”

In Woolf’s time, the gothic effects of Mrs. Radcliffe no longer frightened readers. For Woolf it was the close-to-home possession of two young children in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. Do the phantoms exist only in the mind of the untested twenty-year-old charged with protecting them? We never know. But the governess experiences something far more frightening than a ghost: Woolf calls it “the sudden extension of her own field of perception.”

The sudden extension of her own field of perception.

Strange. Terrifying. Something we are likely to experience in our world too. A sudden glimpse of a terrain beyond our perceived limits, and nothing is ever the same again. Isn’t this exactly what happens when a reader encounters a truly disquieting short story? You feel as if a trap-door has opened and you’ve fallen through. Everyone and everything — out there in the world — looks slightly different. The line between private and public starts to blur.

Being a reader is a life-long project, and we all want to do it well. Sometimes, it’s easy to get caught up in the parts of a reader’s life that feel insurmountable — the TBR list you’ll never complete; the library hold list you’ll never catch up on; all the amazing books you’ll never hear about, let alone find and own!

But there are little ways we can enrich our reading lives every day: small changes we can make or ideas we can try to change up our reading patterns and find new books to love. Here are forty places to start. Add your own in the comments below, or try a couple first and then come tell me how they go.

1. Wake up 15 minutes earlier than usual and use that time to read a poem.

Read what you want? What you like. No guilty pleasure. No shame. So read Scifi, Fantasy or Thriller & don’t be guilty about that. So do your own thing and enjoy your reads. Watch the video to know there’s no shame in that.

Publishing a Novel: INFOGRAPHIC

How to Read More Than 3 Books a Month

Behavioral specialist Sam Thomas Davies reads more than 42 books a year. His trick? He relies on “the 10% rule.”

That is, he recommends that you “commit to reading your new book in its entirety” by reading 10 percent every day, he explains in a piece published on HighExistence.com. It also helps to own a Kindle, he says, because you have access to so many books and it is easy to read books on the go.